Re: 70’s vs 80’s...quick, pick one!

Ask me this most of my life and I would’ve always opted for the 80s. I guess I always saw the 70s as merely the decade of the eagles, seals & croft, and James Taylor. The 80s gave me the look and sound I was hungry for.

However, in the last year or so I’ve come to start thinking that the 70s actually was the more innovative decade musically. More interesting artists emerged and more unprecidented trends. And it ends with what will probably always be my fave musical year, the mighty 1979.

Most of my favorite songs and albums are probably 80s releases...but I’ve been in denial about the depth of the 70s for far too long.

Yeah yeah, time is a man-made construct and musical progress could care less about 10-year boundaries....but for the sake of discussion, I’m sticking with the decade delineation.

Your thoughts??

Most of my favorite songs and releases are from the '80s too. And I always saw the '70s as the decade of such useless artists like the ones you mentioned, Bip ... to say nothing of being the birthplace of fake-rock (or, more accurately, the place where music itself took a titanic shit and produced fake-rock). But more and more, I'm seeing the '70s as the decade that produced a lot of music I love, and a lot more that influenced later artists that I love.

And much like Bip, my favorite years in music are 1978 and 1979, so there ya go.

This:

"Most of my favorite songs and albums are probably 80s releases...but I’ve been in denial about the depth of the 70s for far too long."

That said, it's close because I'm such a big prog fan in addition to the styles that became popular in the late '70s-early '80s. But if I was forced to choose, I go with the '80s.

Let's be honest, people: you could put on an '80s college station and leave it on all day. it wouldn't all be great, but could you put on any station in the 70s and leave it on all day?

I disagree pretty strongly. For me, radio stations for either decade would have me flipping the dial like crazy.

At least up until the 2010s (when I finally succumbed to being old and jaded), I would argue no decade is superior to another. Every decade has its gems and its rotten fruit in nearly equal measure. If someone held a gun to my head and said "Pick a decade," I'd just say "Shoot."

'78-'82 is the acme for my taste in music. The 80s was almost as bad as the 70s in the mainstream of things. But the 70s coughed up Roxy Music, so I'll go with the 70s.



Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®

I dislike the trend of breaking music into strict decades. For me, there was one great decade from 1976 to around 1984. The first part of the 1970s was very meh, with all sorts of unwelcome trends, and the latter part of the 1980s went downhill very quickly.

Since then, the 1970s have become synonymous with classic rock, and the 1980s with synth-laden music and Michael Jackson derivatives. I wish that somewhere, a radio station would concentrate on the good years (and the good music) from the two decades and just forget the rest.

> I wish that somewhere, a radio station would concentrate on the good years (and the good
> music) from the two decades and just forget the rest.

I do what I can, man ...

I like the 80s because it was weird, I'll love songs from the 80s you'd think I'd hate - in the 70s I don't have that sort of excitement, the likes are more obvious.

Quote

Let's be honest, people: you could put on an '80s college station and leave it on all day. it wouldn't all be great, but could you put on any station in the 70s and leave it on all day?

If you have Sirius radio, you can put that to the test. Speaking only for myself, the 70s top 40 station kicks the New Wave Classics station's ass eight ways to Sunday.

It's not exactly a fair fight, though, due to the formats of the stations. The 70s top 40 station seems to leave it up to the DJs what to play, as long as it fits the format, but the New Wave station has an obvious monthly top 40 style playlist handed down by the program manager, which means you hear the same damn songs every day, sometimes multiple times, with the result that you get sick of songs you've previously loved pretty quickly.

It sounds heretical, but when I'm driving to work, I'd rather hear "Take It Easy" once every couple of weeks than "Blue Monday" six times in three days, especially when chances are "Take It Easy" will be followed by Bill Withers or Todd Rundgren, while "Blue Monday" will be followed by "The Great Commandment" by Camouflage or "Should I Stay or Should I Go," a song I would honestly be overjoyed to never hear again for the rest of my time on Earth.

LIke I said, it's not a perfect competition, as the format renders the New Wave station aggravating beyond belief. If the DJs were allowed to program their own shows, the station would likely rule, since they all sneak in an obscurity here or there and could have a kick-ass station if they were allowed to. But as it stands, every ten song set on the station seems to be required to include: either of the two New Order songs on the playlist that month, a Smiths/Morrissey tune, a Depeche Mode number, "Should I Stay or Should I Go" or "Rush" (the dynamic duo of annoying Mick Jones tunes), something from Little Creatures, something from Disintegration, InXs, a Goth cut (Siouxsie, Love and Rockets or the Bauhaus version of "Ziggy Stardust" only, please), that fucking Camouflage song, and finally DJ's choice. It's excruciating.

Still, it's better than the 90s alternative station on Sirius - a typical 10 song set there consists of seven tracks by Alice in Chains, two split up between Pearl Jam, Nirvana and Soundgarden, then the final spot goes to a rotation of Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails, the Gin Blossoms, Oasis, Everclear and "Flagpole Sitta". If that station ever plays anything outside of those selections, seek shelter for apocalypse is nigh.

I'm not crazy about the First Wave channel either (Underground Garage is my jam). The great 70s stuff is indeed the greatest: the whole Stooges/ Bowie/Roxy axis, krautrock, CBGB and UK punk. But the college stations that i listened to in the 80s played, well, check all those TP reviews. The amount of quality stuff really exploded after punk let loose the DIY revolution, a world of hardcore, power pop, synth, goth, industrial, hip hop, roots-cow punk, world music, indie, avant weirdness, Paisley Undergound, noise rock, everything on SST, 4AD, SubPop, K Records, etc etc. Behold, the sheer scope...the SCOPE..! The 70s didnt have the whole indie lable/college radio/'zines culture set up, so most alt rock was, in terms of sheer numbers, a pretty small potatoes, not-to-succesful scene.

The commercial crap is another story. Doobie Bros vs Huey Lewis? A draw.



Post Edited (03-11-19 23:46)

Mainstream radio, which Sirius basically is even if it doesn't literally play ads, is based around repeating songs it thinks listeners want to hear endlessly. A cafe I go to several times a week used to play "New York's Alternative," and I could guarantee that if I was there 45 minutes, I would hear Lovelytheband's "Broken." Now they play one of New York's hip-hop stations, and I know that I'll hear a playlist of 10 songs that they constantly repeat, and the only difference with the alt-rock station is that one played older music (some of which I liked a lot, and even Green Day and the Foo Fighters sound far better than "Broken.") I'm way too young to have experienced '70s FM radio, but I listened to college radio constantly from 1986-88, when I was in high school student. I can't say it was as eclectic as MrFab described, but it did introduce me to the indie scene of the time (and it might have introduced me to older music had a much larger selection of classic punk, post-punk, jazz, Kraturock, etc. been in print then.) I heard Husker Du, Big Black, Sonic Youth and the Butthole Surfers as often as I would've heard Phil Collins and Madonna on top 40 radio then. Does anyone still listen to college radio?

I listen to as much 70s music as I do 80s. These 70s albums below are on my heavy rotation. I would love a radio station that featured songs from these artists (i'm not holding my breath).

The B-52s
#1 Record - Big Star
Radio City - Big Star
Parallel Lines - Blondie
Eat to the Beat - Blondie
Blood on the Tracks - Dylan
The Cars
Cheap Trick
In Color - Cheap Trick
The Clash
Crazy Horse
Tracks On Wax - Dave Edmunds
Repeat when Necessary - Dave Edmunds
Hunky Dory - Bowie
Station to Station - Bowie
Motel Shot - Delaney and Bonnie
Layla - Clapton
Tumbleweed Connection - Elton John
My Aim in True - Elvis Costello
This Year's Model - Elvis Costello
Flamingo - Flamin' Groovies
Entertainment - Gang of Four
Ian Hunter
Honky Tonk Masquerade - Joe Ely
Sweet Revenge - John Prine
Sailin' Shoes - Little Feat
Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd - Lynyrd Skynyrd
Time Fades Away - Neil Young
New York Dolls
Pink Moon - Nick Drake
Jesus of Cool - Nick Lowe
Rocket to Russia - Ramones
I want to See the Bright Lights Tonight - Richard and Linda Thompson
Pour Down like Silver - Richard and Linda Thompson
The Roches
Every Picture Tells a Story - Rod Stewart
Exile on Main Street - Rolling Stones
Countdown to Ecstasy - Steely Dan
Pretzel Logic - Steely Dan
Marquee Moon - Television
Runt: The Ballad of Todd Rundgren
Something / Anything - Todd Rundgren
It's too late to stop now - Van Morrison
Pink Flag - Wire
Germ Free Adolescents - X-Ray Spex

That'll give me a good foundation for my next three or four setlists. Thanks Jo!

'70 - '74 = best, most varied and eclectic time for Top 40
shit changed fast, along with massive electronic, recording and instrument changes